[Unnecessary intro]

This Monday I spent the really early hours of the day puking due to some unknown sickness. I then moved from Turkey to Sweden. Then I got introduced to my job the coming months, my new apartment and the workings of the trams of Gothenburg (Göteborg). Then it was eight in the evening and it was time for me GM a beautiful friform scenario.

So it was a rough day. But our session was a lot of fun and in addition interesting. We played a scenario called Under sommaren (During the Summer). It is written by Gustaf Edman, member of the illustrious friform group ASF. Most readers of this forum won't be too familiar with this form of play, even if there have been more about similar things on these pages as of late. The curious can read this thread on the Danish freeform tradition, which will give also a good idea about the typical state of Swedish freeform. Recently there have been writings here and other 'indie' forums on Jeepform, which is a subset of Swedish freeform (at least culturally). I should also note that a couple of techniques that we used, not existing in the original game, were inspired by Jeep people.

[/Unnecessary intro]

I have GM:ed Under sommaren once before. That time I kept as close as I could to the written game. This time we made some small changes in the form, we also added one player, but all the original characters remained the same. I will first tell you shortly about the game as written and then I will talk about the changes we made and then you get the full monty.

The game as written

The game is written for five players, (which in our lingo would be four players, since the GM normally is not seen as a player, but I will use Forge lingo. Mainly because I think it makes more sense, actually.). including one GM. The GM has one character to play during a short part of the game, while the other players play only one character through all the game. The story is about five people who spent these wonderful summers together in their youth. When the game begins they have all moved away from their small home city to different larger cities . All but one. The game starts a few day after the four exiles have learned that their fifth old friend has died. They return to their hometown to visit his funeral. The game describes in about eight scenes their whole visit (about 24 hours) in the village. During this time they discover that he committed suicide. There is almost no plot, the game is almost fully about their discussions about their memories, guilt, feelings and the problems of treating all this. It should be mentioned that the game is propelled mainly by the character descriptions which quite clearly defines the character and what will happen during the game (although this is usually invisible to most players when reading only one character). The GM has usually very little work to do, mostly to frame scenes, break scenes and give some impulses when the game gets slow. The game is supposed to be played 'live'. If the player are sitting also his character is sitting and so on.

What we changed

The game as written is good, but it can really get a bit too slow (at least from the eyes of the watching GM...). Also reflection and guilt can be animated. Firstly we cleaved the scene in two. One represented present time and in one only flashbacks, scenes from past times could be played. We said that these flashbacks all should be from two specific time periods. Flashbacks could be started by any player and that player could drag other players into the flashback scene, either as their own roles or as some other role that was needed at that moment. We also said that a scene could be scene as representing that persons perspective and that another player could redo a scene if she wanted.

Secondly, we introduced a sixth player to the game. In the flashback zone he played the dead character, Mikael. In the now zone he was a second GM, that could do bird in the ear and so on. He could at times also represent Mikael in the now zone, which was perhaps a little bit confusing for the players, but not much.

The players

My old friend Fredrik (who moves to China tomorrow!) played Mikael/second GM. I didn't know Martin, Jenny, Johan and Stina on beforehand, although I had shortly met two of them at larps earlier. But the latter four make up an old friend group and I think this fact somewhat affected the game. Their present friendship resonated somehow with the somewhat lost friendship of the characters.

The game, as played

Generally the game was successful. It took about two hours of active play. I think the flashbacks really added to the game. They made it much more fun, but also allowed for more story to be told. While there were a couple of boring flashbacks, I mainly remember the successful ones. It is a powerful technique, when left open to the players. At one point the four grown up characters are looking for a track in the forrest, their track in their forrest, as it were. They quarrel and the mood is low. Then Johan jumps into the flashback zone, show that he is running and screams happily "You can't catch me, you can't catch me.". All other players join in the game of past. It is very simple, but the contrast you get through this make you really feel the characters and the change that the years have force onto them i a way that might be hard to find in table top gaming or traditional larp. Several things that I had stated about the flashbacks before the game didn't feel appropriate while playing and were dropped. Flashbacks were told from all periods, not only from the ones I had said originally. I had thought that this would be confusing, but that was just wrong. The idea of player ownership of flashback scenes also didn't feel relevant and there was no replaying. And really, I don't think replaying and editing of scenes really has a function in this scenario. There is no real fight of what is the truth here.

If this version is ever to be played again one should probably look over the Second GM role, since he didn't have much to do between flashbacks. But generally it worked very good. But I really think it was appreciated by all players and it really increased the emotional charge of some scenes. The presence of Mikael as a physical person geared the subject of the game slightly towards that and there were a few other interpersonal issues which were never addressed in the game.

It was my first role playing session of any kind except for on-line role playing (I have played some table top and free form over chat and phone) for over two years. And now I want more again!

What a sweet game to come back into face to face role playing with, Sven. Great write up.

It sounds like the flashbacks changed the game considerably, and for the better. You say it speeded things up, did that make for shorter play, or was it a matter of getting things to a greater level of intensity more quickly?  And to clarify, you made zones on the floor that corresponded to different time periods, right? Did you end up using them, or was it enough to know that you could do flashbacks.  Did you do flash forwards too?

There is almost no plot, the game is almost fully about their discussions about their memories, guilt, feelings and the problems of treating all this. It should be mentioned that the game is propelled mainly by the character descriptions which quite clearly defines the character and what will happen during the game (although this is usually invisible to most players when reading only one character).

Thanks for the questions, Emily.

Emily wrote:
It sounds like the flashbacks changed the game considerably, and for the better. You say it speeded things up, did that make for shorter play, or was it a matter of getting things to a greater level of intensity more quickly?

Emily wrote:
  And to clarify, you made zones on the floor that corresponded to different time periods, right? Did you end up using them, or was it enough to know that you could do flashbacks.  Did you do flash forwards too?

There is almost no plot, the game is almost fully about their discussions about their memories, guilt, feelings and the problems of treating all this. It should be mentioned that the game is propelled mainly by the character descriptions which quite clearly defines the character and what will happen during the game (although this is usually invisible to most players when reading only one character).

This is an interesting aspect of scenario and various types of structured freeform play. It makes the writing, and interpreting for play very different. Do you have any reflections on the relative strengths and weaknesses of this type of presentation? It's something I'm thinking about a lot right now.

Hello Sven,

Thanks for the report.

In reference to Doubt, Emily discussed "playing close to home", meaning the players deliberately bring parts of themselves into the character. I don't want to confuse ASF with the Jeep, they're very different, but did anything like that happen in your game? Did you discuss the game in relation to you as people before or after play?

Also did you, Sven, learn anything new regarding the game's theme this time? The scenario seems like a wonderful tool to examine your own view on suicide and how to handle it. But are the players (and game master) free to make personal statements or are they supposed to focus on acting out the pre-written characters?

- Jonas

In reference to Doubt, Emily discussed "playing close to home", meaning the players deliberately bring parts of themselves into the character. I don't want to confuse ASF with the Jeep, they're very different, but did anything like that happen in your game? Did you discuss the game in relation to you as people before or after play?

Also did you, Sven, learn anything new regarding the game's theme this time? The scenario seems like a wonderful tool to examine your own view on suicide and how to handle it. But are the players (and game master) free to make personal statements or are they supposed to focus on acting out the pre-written characters?

Thanks for your answers, Sven. I have a couple more questions if you don't mind.

How close do you get to the actual funeral in the scenario? Is there a scene in church or immediately after? You say you discussed funerals afterwards, and I'm wondering if it was triggered by something that happened or didn't happen in game.

Also, how do you handle other people, like relatives? Is it possible to meet the dead man's parents in game? Or would that draw focus away from the group of friends?

- Jonas

Jonas,

For the present-time-scenes I kept it very close to the original. The original game has eight scenes and I framed those eight pretty straight. I was prepared to play other scenes, but the players just didn't do much unexpected things in the present day time flow, so there was no need.

In these pre scripted scenes there is one that starts right at the end of the funeral, right after the priest has finished speaking. They almost don't play in the church. I describe them being there and say they walk out and then they have a discussion on the church stairs. There is also only one real NPC, which is Mikael's (the dead guy) mother. I played her in two scenes. Otherwise we didn't have any relatives. And I think the point is that except for his mother you don't want anyone else, because that would divert your attention from the main issues. I think it would suffer from more people. In the flashbacks we put in other people for extremely short visits. It came naturally.

I haven't thought about this before, but it's quite interesting. In the flashback scenes the wife of the character Nils appeared a few times, but always 'out of the picture'. That is, Nils's player was standing in the flashback zone (in two different scenes) and screamed to his wife who answered (voiced by a random other player, not by me) with screaming from outside the flashback zone. It was obvious that she was 'out of sight', only her voice could be heard.

Luckily you read Swedish, so you can actually read the scenario. It's short. You should. You will.

I should also add that the author of the original scenario is Gustav Edman. I misspelled his name earlier.

No english language version, huh?

*sigh*

There is none, as far as I know. I could ask the guys, to make sure.